Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less

As often happens to driven, ambitious people, his earlier success had distracted him from his clarity of purpose.

a high level of contribution to the shared mission of the company.

Weniger aber besser.

Once the big decision is made, all subsequent decisions come into better focus.

How often do you say yes simply to please? Or to avoid trouble? Or because “yes” had just become your default response?

something called “the endowment effect,” our tendency to undervalue things that aren’t ours and to overvalue things because we already own them.

Once the mental work shifts to the basal ganglia, mental space is freed up to concentrate on something new. This allows us to autopilot the execution of one essential activity while simultaneously actively engaging in another, without sacrificing our level of focus or contribution.

understand the ‘spiderweb’ of the story

It’s crucial, Mariam says, to seek “a different perspective on a given story, one that would shed the light on the topic in a fresh, different or thought-provoking way.”